5 Ideas for Small Businesses to Increase Sales with Social Media
Social media can be a small business marketing machine, but you need to make sure that you've set up for success and sales. Here are five clever ideas for small businesses to increase sales using social media.
Let's look at 5 Ideas for Small Businesses that you can start right away:
Boost your Bio
Refreshing your bios on your social profiles is an excellent start to boost your social media presence. This could be the first and only impression if you don't use your bio space wisely. Using social media for social selling requires a gentle touch as you don't want to use hard-sell techniques on social media.
Here's an example of a bio for Instagram or Twitter:
Mentor For Authors
I help writers get published!
🎙 #1 Podcaster “The Write Stuff”
🤩 Helping writers land their dream agents
👇 Ready to write your first book?
Thinking specifically of making sales, add this language to your bios:
- Make sure you convey what you do or sell.
- Let people know why they should follow your account.
- Use great visuals for your header images to show people what you do.
- Use keywords so you'll show up in search.
- Try to make it engaging and memorable.
- Include your location
- Add links to your website or use a tool that allows you to have more than one click. I have a social page on my website that I use to highlight multiple links that people might like versus just sending them to my homepage.
Be Consistent
“71% of small-to-mid-sized businesses use social media for marketing themselves, and of those who do so, 52% post at least daily.” {source}
Posting consistently builds trust and a relationship as they know they can go to your social profiles for information, education, or entertainment.
Create a thirty-day content calendar that you can use repeatedly, switching out the holidays and important dates each month. I love to use a written calendar and then get things digital with tools like Trello, Planoly, or SmarterQueue. Planoly creates excellent, free downloads each quarter. I like adding them to my reMarkable tablet and writing on them or using my Flair pens on a printed copy. I do love color-coding things!
There's no right or wrong way to make a calendar, just make sure that you're consistent and create a system that makes it work for you.
For me, monthly content calendar creation looks like this:
- Create a theme or topic for the month.
- Write in holidays and sales dates.
- Add events like webinars or live streams.
- Add content to support the theme, including blog posts, email newsletters, and social media posts to support blog content.
- Mark days to talk about products or services.
- Show some behind-the-scenes to help people connect with me as a person.
- Craft some posts purely for inspiration or entertainment.
Connect on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is widely overlooked for creating a deeper connection with prospective customers. Thoughtfully connecting with people that you want to network with is the only way to go – who you connect with makes a huge difference as your connections are linked throughout LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, “the basic type of connection is a contact you know personally and who you trust on a professional level. Once you've “connected” to them on LinkedIn, you are considered a 1st-degree connection.
You also have an extended network of connections made up of people that your connections know. Your communication options for your extended network vary based on how closely connected you are.”
Make sure to send a custom note to each person that you're sending a connection request. Customizing your message shows that you care and why you wanted to connect with them. While you can send messages right away, don't bombard inboxes with pushy messages.
Communicate with Messages
Whether you're using Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, direct messages or DMs are a deeper connection and a chance to go beyond public comments. Direct messages can help you build a real relationship with real people; this will take time and could be a sale in a week, a month, or maybe longer.
It does take skill to learn to get the DM process down, however here are some ideas:
- Start with a question to open the conversation, such as, “what's your favorite XYZ?” Take a moment to look at their profile to find something that they love or a common interest.
- Remember that you're building a relationship – don't start by sending links to your website or a sale.
- Send a nice note saying thank you for connecting and that you're looking forward to learning more about what they do.
- Make sure to check your messages and respond to meaningful messages. If you're getting spam messages, delete them.
Pick a Focus for the Month
This may seem like common sense, but you have to tell people what you're selling or what services you provide. I've followed people for a long time before I realized they had a shop because they never shared it. There's a balance between too much and too little promotion. Not selling at all is as bad as overselling. Choose one thing that you're going to work on promoting each month. Create one post each week that is focused on your chosen service or product. If you don't have an extensive product launch, choose a smaller item like a download or evergreen product that you can talk about. Mix conversations about products you're creating, showcase something being used and share User-Generated Content (UGC) that shows customers using your products.
Let people know you're selling and how they can buy from you with Calls-to-Action (CTAs) in your text, such as “details in my bio,” “grab your own before they're gone,” “send me a DM for information.” Open the conversation and give them a link to make a purchase.
I hope these five ideas for small businesses will spark ideas and action for your social media and that you make more sales as a result. Remember, you're building relationships and growing brand awareness with every post and conversation.
